Outdoors, action, adventure

Toddler using Barbie fishing pole lands 20-lb. muskie

My former colleague, Pete Thomas, wrote a post in 2008 about a North Carolina state-record catfish caught using a pink Barbie fishing rod.

Now, a pink Barbie fishing pole has made the news again.

Fox 9 News Minnesota reports that 2-year-old Ella Haag was fishing with her grandparents at Round Lake
near Randall, Minn., on Saturday when she landed her first fish, and it was a
whopper.

Not the sunfish she first hooked using her favorite pink Barbie fishing pole, but the one that decided that sunfish was the
perfect bait.

"Ella had her sunfish on and she's reeling it in," her mother, Carrie Haag,
said. "Here comes this big muskie that went and ate her sunfish. So I
grabbed the pole and yelled for grandpa David."

Her grandfather grabbed a net and soon they landed a 30-inch muskie weighing in at a little under 20 pounds -- a fish bigger than the angler who caught it.

After taking a photo, the family snapped the line and let the muskie go.

The Barbie fishing pole survived the incident as well, and Ella was so excited
she said the first thing that came to her mind -- "I caught a shark."

While not a state record -- Minnesota Department of Natural Resources reports that a muskie was landed in 1957 and weighed in at 54 pounds -- it sure is a big catch for a little girl, and a great start to her fishing memories.